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Books & Writers Central

External Hard Drives Mac

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#1 of 35 Posted Sep-9 6:17 PM

From Pam Posts 5627 Last Nov-21
To All [Msg # 65140.1 ]

(Sysops, I didn't know where to put this question as it didn't seem like Gonk material, but feel free to move it.)

I'm wondering what you folks use for backup.

I'm looking at external hard drives for my MacBook Pro, and I'm considering the Western Digital My Book Studio edition (1 TB, because I have literally tens of thousands of photos.) However, the reviews are less than glowing citing problems with freeze-ups and breakage.

Thoughts?

Pam

http://anovelwoman.blogspot.com/

#2 of 35 Posted Sep-9 6:55 PM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Pam [Msg # 65140.2 65140.1 ]

I have had excellent success with the LaCie brand. I have one of their external drives on each Mac, and have had no problems. And I have almost a dozen Macs around me these days between family and work.

For our photo collection at home, I have the 2TB LaCie drive hooked up to an iMac. We can connect to that with the laptops to transfer stuff. I have a separate portable LaCie drive for my laptop to use strictly for Time Machine backup, and a similar HD for long trips. (For making external copies of the novel and other things.)

The stationary HD for photos is called the 'Quadra'. The portal ones are called 'rugged' and thay have a soft silicone outer sleeve to reduce the impact of impacts. <g> LaCie has been making Mac-compatible stuff for many years, and they tend to be a cut above some of the stuff that's out there, IMO. They have other lines as well as the ones I described that might suit you better; they are at:

http://www.lacie.com

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#3 of 35 Posted Sep-9 10:17 PM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To Pam [Msg # 65140.3 65140.1 ]

Pam,

I have one of those MyBook 1TB drives, although I use it with Windows. It's worked perfectly so far. Before that I had the equivalent 500GB drive, and that worked perfectly as well until I ran out of space and bought the 1TB version. I then put the 500GB drive on my wife's laptop, where it was connected all the time (my one I only plug in when I want to back something up), and after 6 months or so it did suddenly die. Still, for the price I can't complain.

One thing to consider though, if you want to store your zillions of photos and whatever on it, is that it should only be a backup, meaning there still needs to be another copy of the files somewhere else. If the only copy of everything is on that drive, then you don't have a backup at all. If your Mac has enough disk space then you can keep another copy there, or you could get two of those drives.

I have the problem that my laptop hard drive keeps filling up, and I want to put stuff on the external drive to free up my laptop hard drive. To actually have a backup though, I also keep a copy on another desktop PC I run as a file server, which has a large hard drive too.

Wayne

#4 of 35 Posted Sep-9 11:49 PM

From Pam Posts 5627 Last Nov-21
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.4 65140.2 ]

Dear Ron,

Interesting. They had LaCie at the Apple store but the sales guy said it was inferior and directed me to the My Book (which also costs $70 more at the store than at Apple online.) Hmmm.

You have 2TB?! That's a lot of memory. My husband said 500 would be enough. Phht. He can't handle the terabytes.<g>

I'll check out the LaCie link. Thanks!

Pam

http://anovelwoman.blogspot.com/

#5 of 35 Posted Sep-9 11:53 PM

From Pam Posts 5627 Last Nov-21
To Wayne Sowry [Msg # 65140.5 65140.3 ]

Dear Wayne,

You had me at hello. Then you lost me at "die" and "backup".<g>

So, basically I want to

1. Free up space on my laptop and
2. Store my photos and documents somewhere so that if my laptop crashes, I have copies I can recover.

Is that not what the My Book is for? And if it dies in six months or whenever, what good is that?

You say you keep your copies (documents, photos, etc.?) on your PC? So I need to buy another PC in order to have somewhere to back up (i.e. store) my Mac stuff?

Oy. I'm confused. I thought I could just buy an external hard drive and be done with it. No?

Pam

http://anovelwoman.blogspot.com/

#6 of 35 Posted Sep-10 1:34 AM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To Pam [Msg # 65140.6 65140.5 ]

Pam,

>> You had me at hello. <<

Wow. I wish I'd known you when I was younger and still single <g>.

>> Free up space on my laptop <<

You can use the external drive to store things just the same as on your PC, but the issue is that you need to keep at least two copies of everything (on different drives) to have a backup. So if you want to move files to the drive from your laptop and then delete them off the laptop, then you still only have a single copy of the files (unless of course you also have copies elsewhere). If the only copy of the files is on the MyBook drive, if the drive dies then you've lost them.

>> Store my photos and documents somewhere so that if my laptop crashes, I have copies I can recover <<

Yes, that's having a backup. But that means you're not deleting the files from your laptop, and thus not freeing up space there.

>> And if it dies in six months or whenever, what good is that? <<

Well... the one I had didn't die in six months, but in about six months after I gave it to my wife for her laptop. I'd already been using it for quite some time before that.

That's pretty much irrelevant though. The bottom line is, and I must emphasise this: any hard disk can die at any time - very suddenly and without warning! Doesn't matter whether it's five years old or just five minutes old, or what brand it is. Any time you store files on any hard drive anywhere, mentally take that drive out of the picture (ie. pretend it's dead) and think where you're going to recover those files from. If the answer is nowhere, then you have no backup and risk losing the files.

As an example, when I have a (digital) camera full of photos and want to move the pictures to my computer, I won't delete them off the camera memory card until I've backed them up to somewhere else from my PC. If I moved the pictures to my PC (ie. deleting them from the camera at the same time), and then my PC hard disk suddenly died, I'd have lost all the photos. Of course while the photos are just on the camera there's no backup either, but the only solutions to that are either get them transferred to a CD periodically at a shop somewhere, or carry multiple memory cards and regularly swap them so that photos are distributed across multiple cards. I've actually seen written that it's better to carry a number of smaller memory cards for a camera, rather than one large one. In the end I guess, the lengths you want to go to will depend on just how important the data is.

There's always some probability that multiple drives may die at the same time too, so even if you have two copies on different drives, they may both be dead when you want to recover the files. The probability of that though is much lower than just a single drive, but even so, for files I absolutely, definitely, never want to lose, I keep multiple copies on different media (eg. I have files on my laptop that are backed up to my home file server, a USB thumb drive, a PC hard disk at work, and periodically to DVD as well - and when the DVD is full, I make a copy of that and keep it at work too). Keeping copies at work is for just in case my house burns down (which should be quite difficult, given all the walls are just brick and cement, but the floors and ceiling are timber). This may all sound like overkill, but hey... I've never lost an important file since I've been doing that! And I have experienced the situation of losing a file on the hard disk (from corruption or accidental deletion or whatever) and then finding my backup copy (on floppy disk it was) was also unreadable.

The problem these days, for lots of large files like photos, videos, and drive images, is that traditional backup media (CD & DVD) are simply not big enough. Even Blu Ray is not much better. When you have a terrabyte of info to back up, the only real choice I can think of for non-professional use is large hard disks (businesses can use tapes). But where someone mightn't have a problem making two or three backup copies on CD or DVD, since they're only a few cents each, I think most people don't think beyond having just one large backup hard drive - and then forget that it's actually supposed to be a backup and instead start moving files there to free up space on their PCs, again leaving them with no backup.

As the saying goes, always expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed. <g>

So where did I lose you this time? <g>

Wayne

Edited Sep-10 by Wayne Sowry

#7 of 35 Posted Sep-10 11:46 AM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Wayne Sowry [Msg # 65140.7 65140.6 ]

Just so you know - the nature of Time Machine is that you dedicate a hard drive to it. So that automatically means that you have two copies.

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#8 of 35 Posted Sep-10 1:59 PM

From Pam Posts 5627 Last Nov-21
To Wayne Sowry [Msg # 65140.8 65140.6 ]

Dear Wayne,

<snort> Didn't lose me this time.<g>

However, I have a friend with the same camera (Nikon D200) who took his memory card to a camera repair shop and they recovered everything he'd ever shot on the card, even the deleted stuff. They call it camera forensics. Not that I want to rely on that, and it was expensive, but he got everything back.

So I guess I'll use the My Book and also some memory keys. I can't get Time Machine to work on my Mac so I'm going to head back to the store and find some teenage boy to help me get that up and running.

Thanks for your help!

Pam

http://anovelwoman.blogspot.com/

#9 of 35 Posted Sep-10 2:01 PM

From Pam Posts 5627 Last Nov-21
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.9 65140.7 ]

Except I can't get my Time Machine to work. It says "the operation could not be completed - an unexpected error occurred - (error code -43)" whatever that means.

Why can't things just work the way they're supposed to?

http://anovelwoman.blogspot.com/

#10 of 35 Posted Sep-10 2:45 PM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Pam [Msg # 65140.10 65140.9 ]

A Google search reveals this:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1367669

which suggests that the problem is that the external drive is not formatted for a Mac. (Did you get the LaCie or the WD? If you got the WD, then you may have to endure some extra steps.)

The Mac universe is well-defined, but only if you get products that are Mac-centric. Products that have to take the vagaries of Windows into account are....dangerous. Annoying. Windows-like. By sticking to Mac-centric products, you enter this other zone.

If it is a LaCie drive, you might have a bad drive - consider asking to exchange it.

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#11 of 35 Posted Sep-10 5:26 PM

From Pam Posts 5627 Last Nov-21
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.11 65140.10 ]

Dear Ron,

I haven't hooked up anything yet.

Is this why I'm getting this message do you suppose? I thought Time Machine was some external storage depot (floating around in the ether somewhere) a facility that came with the MacBook Pro, i.e., independent of any external hard drive. No?

I want a teenage boy! Where is my kid when I need him?! I hate being boondoggled by something this basic. Gah.

Pam

http://anovelwoman.blogspot.com/

#12 of 35 Posted Sep-10 8:15 PM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.12 65140.7 ]

Ron,

>> the nature of Time Machine is that you dedicate a hard drive to it. So that automatically means that you have two copies <<

I just had a quick look at what Time Machine does, and it appears to be ordinary incremental drive imaging software. I use Acronis TrueImage for my Windows PCs to do the same thing, but don't actually bother with the incremental part (I always do full images). I also store images for about half a dozen PCs on the one external drive, which is mainly why I need such a big one.

Drive imaging is great (I highly recommend it), but you only have two copies of everything provided you don't delete anything from the PC you're imaging. For example, if you have a pile of photos on your PC and have had them imaged with Time Machine, then you delete them off the PC to free up disk space, you no longer have a backup of those photos (provided they're not stored somewhere else as well). If the external drive suddenly dies, those photos are gone.

So with an external hard disk, there are two typical reasons for using one:

1) To keep a second copy of files on a PC as a backup.
2) To have somewhere to move files to from a PC to allow the PC's drive space to be freed up.

The first scenario is a backup but the second is not. If the aim of the external drive is to allow files to be moved off the PC, then another method is still required for backup. In the case of huge amounts of data (say 40GB+), I think the only real option is large hard disks, so that means either having two external hard disks and keeping copies on both, or having a separate file server PC with a large hard disk (which is what I have). The file server is more expensive, but also means you have another PC that you can do things with (eg. I run virtual machines on there, including a home Wiki).

For anyone who might be interested, here's what I do for backups (ignoring the off-site backups for now). As mentioned, I have a file server PC with a large hard disk (750GB from memory), a USB external hard drive (1TB), and a USB thumb drive (4GB, but the size needed depends on the amount of data you're regularly working on). Our laptops can access the file server via a wireless network.

1) For the day-to-day small stuff I work on, like documents and software source code, I back the files up daily (or even multiple times a day) to the USB thumb drive and to the file server. For backing up whole projects of files (common with software), I use archiving software (ZIP or similar). Being what you might call a power user, I tend to use basic command line tools like archivers and batch files for this rather than specific backup software. And as I detailed in a thread some time ago, for original works (ie. documents and software I'm writing myself), I use revision control software so that I can always go back to earlier versions to recover anything I might have deleted or changed since (at work we use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, but at home I use the one I detailed in that thread called Subversion, with the TortoiseSVN user interface, which is free).

2) For larger amounts of data, like photos, videos, and music, I first copy them to the external hard drive (assuming they're originally on my laptop) and then move the external drive to the file server and copy them to the file server (if there are only a few files that are not too large, I will copy them to the file server over the wireless network). I can then delete them from my laptop if I want to. If the file server ever runs out of hard disk space, I will just buy an external hard disk for that. There is little point in archiving (ZIPping) these types of files as they're already compressed and won't compress any more (assuming the photos are in JPEG format).

3) Periodically (typically every month or three, depending on how much has changed during that time), I will do a drive image of the laptop and the file server to the external hard drive. For the file server in particular, this takes a long time, but I just let it run over night. That also images the virtual machines (the Wiki and other XP machine I have on there). While drive imaging can take a long time, it only takes a minute of my time to get it started, after which I can go away and forget about it until it's finished (I can also keep working while the imaging is running in the background, but that can impact on machine performance if I'm doing something intensive).

From a recovery point of view, if the external drive dies and I buy a new one, I can copy all the information back onto it from the file server. I would then need to do new drive images of each machine to recover those. If the file server hard disk dies, I'd put in a new one and restore the latest image from the external drive. I'd then recover the latest versions of my working files and any photos, etc, from either my laptop, the USB thumb drive, or the external drive. The only thing I'm susceptible to is two drives dying at the same time. For my important files (original works, photos, etc), I actually keep more copies than that (including copies at work and/or on DVD). The worst-case scenario would be having the laptop or file server hard disk die at the same time as the external hard disk, as I'd then have no drive image to restore. This would mean having to reinstall everything onto the new hard disk from scratch - certainly inconvenient, but nothing important would actually be lost (I also keep extra backups of the Wiki virtual machine). In general, where I talk about the file server, a second external hard disk would work just as well.

Wayne

Edited Sep-10 by Wayne Sowry

#13 of 35 Posted Sep-10 8:31 PM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To Pam [Msg # 65140.13 65140.8 ]

Pam,

>> they recovered everything he'd ever shot on the card, even the deleted stuff <<

I can see how they could recover old stuff that hadn't yet been overwritten, but if old photos had already been overwritten with new photo data, I don't see how they could recover those old photos.

My suggestion would be to use Time Machine (if you can get it working) with the external hard disk, but also keep copies of all your original work, including photos, on other media as well (the USB memory keys, DVDs, your email account, or whatever). If you have a lot of large photos, the problem becomes the amount of storage required again. For a few GBs worth, USB memory keys and DVDs will work, but if you have tens or even hundreds of GBs, then you're back to needing large hard disks. If you want to at some point delete those photos from your Mac, then you need something more than just the one MyBook drive to maintain a backup of them.

I still highly recommend using DVDs (or CDs for smaller amounts) for backing up original data, unless there's so much that you'd need dozens of them. Write-once DVDs give a permanent snapshot of your data, as you can't overwrite it once written, so there's no risk of corrupting your files and then finding you've already overwritten your backups with the corrupted version. With periodic DVD snapshots, you'll always have older versions you can go back to. It may mean you've lost a fair bit of recent work, but at least you won't be going back to nothing. Of course DVDs can be damaged or deteriorate too, but typically they last a very long time and you can always use two DVDs for all backups (I do this too for my original data).

Wayne

Edited Sep-10 by Wayne Sowry

#14 of 35 Posted Sep-10 8:54 PM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Pam [Msg # 65140.14 65140.11 ]

There's nothing TO work if you haven't hooked up a hard drive yet. <g> Time Machine is software that runs on your Mac, and that uses a dedicated external hard drive to do its work.

Once you connect the external hard drive, and format it (with a LaCie, it will automatically ask you if you want it formated for a Mac, or whether you want some space set aside for Windows to deal with), then just go to the little Apple-log menu, select System Preferences, then Time Machine, then "ON".

It should pick the external drive automatically. If not, there is a button for 'select disk'. The options button allows you to exclude folders from backup, but I don't see much point in that for most of us.

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#15 of 35 Posted Sep-10 9:00 PM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Wayne Sowry [Msg # 65140.15 65140.12 ]

Time Machine uses a dedicated hard drive to back up your computer's hard drive. I suppose it might be configured to back up more than one hard drive; haven't tried.

You can also use a hard drive on a file server as the backup target.

I really don't think of Time Machine as an 'ordinary' incremental backup. It's got an interface that I find far superior to anything I came across in Windows. <g> You really have to think a little differently to set up the right Time Machine scheme if you have multiple drives, but the 'difference' is mostly because it's so simple and automatic for the most part. <g> Since Time Machine automatically marks the external drive it uses as an exclusion, my presumption would be that it would automatically handle all attached hard drives without intervention, but I haven't verified that, it's just a deduction.

The idea behind time machine is to give you frequent (hourly) backups of your data, but in practice it's more granular than hourly - it appears to _label_ things on an hourly basis, but it also appears to make backups within seconds of changes. So it really is a very good system, IMO. And the ability to use a file server as the target is nice, too.

For me, it's part of the reason why I'm so much more comfortable on a Mac compared to Windows, and why I spend far less time thinking through things in the detailed way you did in your message. I can remember writing stuff just like that a couple of years ago; now I don't _have_ to. I could get into Mac innards, but never seem to have cause. <g>

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#16 of 35 Posted Sep-10 9:38 PM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.16 65140.15 ]

Ron,

>> I really don't think of Time Machine as an 'ordinary' incremental backup <<

Well it doesn't matter how wonderful the UI is, when it comes to the crunch with regard to backups, it's only a single copy of what's on the PC. That's the important thing. The rest is just window dressing.

So anything subsequently deleted from the PC no longer has a backup (ie. there's one copy on the Time Machine external drive, but no backup of that). For me, the thing I always ask myself is if this hard disk dies right now (say the external one), can I still recover the files from somewhere? The answer has to be yes.

Wayne

#17 of 35 Posted Sep-10 10:40 PM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Wayne Sowry [Msg # 65140.17 65140.16 ]

Maybe I'm not being clear; maybe this is just a big difference between Windows and Mac.

The purpose of Time Machine appears to be to back up _what is on your hard disk_. I suppose you could then delete a file and count on the Time Machine hard drive to get it back when you want it, but the UI just doesn't make you think along those lines.

Here is what I think a more complex but still safe Mac backup scheme would look like.

* One HD dedicated to Time Machine backup. It should be around 30% larger than the sum total of other hard drives if you want long term backup storage. The larger it is, the longer that individual increments will be saved. Depending on your change rate, +30% should give you 6-12 months of incremental backup.

* Additional HDs, internal or external, which are backed up via Time Machine to the dedicated HD above.

* Other storage. This might be a file server, DVDs, USB drives, whatever, for stuff that you want to keep for a long time but access infrequently. This will NOT be backed up by Time Machine (although if you use a Mac file server, you could easily use that machine's Time Machine for additional redundancy).

I think that is the Mac version of what you were describing. You could use RAID technology to add some redundancy for the offline (Other) storage, but in my experience, it only covers are small subset of possible disasters. <g>

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#18 of 35 Posted Sep-10 11:31 PM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.18 65140.17 ]

Ron,

What you are describing is fine provided you don't delete anything from the machine being backed up. In the end, no matter what software you're using or what sort of view of the world it presents you with, there are only two physical hard disks: the one in the Mac and the external one. Unless a file is on both, or on some other media altogether, then it's not backed up.

Typically someone would want to delete stuff from the PC (Mac) because its hard disk is getting full. I do it all the time, as I often play with photo, video, and audio files which can take up lots of disk space. If they do that, and only have Time Machine and the one external hard disk as a backup, then they in fact have no backup for those files. If the external hard disk dies, all is lost.

So forget the software and just think in terms of the number of physical hard disks (or other media) a file is stored on. It has to be more than one to be considered backed up.

Wayne

#19 of 35 Posted Sep-11 12:58 AM

From rwodaski Posts 1689 Last Nov-21
To Wayne Sowry [Msg # 65140.19 65140.18 ]

I agree with you. The thing is, because of how Time Machine works, a user is highly unlikely to ever reach the conclusion you state, so it's thereofre not likely to be a problem. <g>

Time Machine is there in case you _accidentally_ delete a file. It doesn't even _look_ like backup software in the sense you think of it. A sophisticated user can figure that out, or someone with technical familiarity will figure that out, but a typical Mac user isn't going to be thinking like that. The whole point of why the software is the issue is that as it is designed (utterly and completely in the background, there to get at older versions accidental deletions, etc.), you are just not thinking of it as your backup. (In fact, since it is _purely_ incremental, eventually files that you delete will also disappear from the backup).

So a user is just not likely to think of the stuff that's "in" Time Machine's store as being anything like what you describe. Time machine is a safety net, not a file store or a pure backup. If you want something 'backed up', then you better have a HD somewhere where you do that - back it up. <g>

Thus my point that the software interface does come into play. It has a huge impact on how a non-technical user views the process. it's a clever, never-think-about-it safety-net. It is just not going to be seen as a place to put files that you then delete - because you never 'put' anything. It's all behind the scenes and you don't care how or why it works; if you make a mistake, you're covered. Period. Looking at what the software does on the back end, yes, a technical person could do the things you describe. It's just not liklely that typical Mac users are going to do that.

And, hey, I'm a technical guy, and I won't ever use it that way. <g>

Ron Wodaski
Dark Matters

#20 of 35 Posted Sep-11 2:04 AM

From Wayne Sowry Posts 2238 Last 4:54 AM
To rwodaski [Msg # 65140.20 65140.19 ]

Ron,

One problem with software like that is that if you don't know what it's doing, then you can't be sure it's actually doing what you think it is <g>. A non-sophisticated user might just see the word "backup" on the box somewhere, as in your earlier messages, and come to the conclusion that it's doing the backups they've heard they should be doing. Then their PC hard drive gets full and they start deleting older files they haven't used for a while, on the assumption that Time Machine has them backed up ('cause that's what it said on the box), then one day the external hard disk dies and those files are irretrievably lost. That's one reason why I still like to use command line archiving tools and batch files - I know exactly what they're doing!

>> The whole point of why the software is the issue is that as it is designed (utterly and completely in the background, there to get at older versions accidental deletions, etc.), you are just not thinking of it as your backup. <<

Well I use standard revision control software for that. It seems that Time Machine is trying to merge drive imaging with revision control, which is fine as long as you understand, as a user, what it's doing and what its limitations are. The concept sounds great, but you have to be sure it's doing what you want. If someone says, as Pam did, that they want to back up their files and free up space on their laptop hard drive, then telling them to just get an external drive and Time Machine isn't enough.

For backups, I think the easiest concept is thinking in terms of physical hard disks (or other media). If you only have one external hard disk and one PC hard disk, and a file is not on your PC hard disk, then it's doesn't have a backup, no matter what sort of fancy software has put however many copies on the external drive.

Wayne

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